A Timeless Being Could Not Be the Adequate
Object of Ordinary Christian Worship
Many, (and, indeed, I suspect most) theists (and here
I include myself) do not worship God as prime mover, first cause, necessary being,
etc., but rather just a compassionate Father who rejoices with us in our joy
and suffers with us in our sorrows. The God of theistic religion (as contra,
perhaps, the God of theistic theology) enters powerfully into our individual and
collective lives—hearing and responding to our prayers, healing our ills, forgiving
our transgressions, redeeming us from sin, impelling us to repentance and
uprightness, inspiring individual decisions and influencing the course of human
history. But if God is timeless, He cannot heal or save or inspire or impel us
to repentance and uprightness. For a timeless being cannot effect or bring
about anything. Neither can a timeless being be affected or prompted by us—it cannot
rejoice with us in our joys or suffer with us in our sorrows. It could not
respond to prayer or acts of worship. It must remain forever passively unmoved
by our overtures, our delights, or antagonisms, our tragedies, or despair and anxieties,
our love, our seeking for it. There are two reasons for this: a timeless being
is immutable in the strong sense of immutable. Such an individual could not be
affected or prompted by another. To be affected or prompted by another is in
some sense to be changed by the other. Further, a timeless being could not
respond to us for responses are located in time after that to which they are
responses.
Mavrodes has objected to the claim that a timeless
being could not be responsive on two grounds: first, he denies the claim that
responses must be located in time after that to which they are
responses; and, second, it is intelligible to conceive of God being timelessly
affected by our actions without being thereby changed in any way. Mavrodes’
first point, I believe to be well taken. At least, it makes sense to conceive
of anticipatory responses where one, sensing the needs another is going to
have, takes steps in advance of the needs actually arising to fulfil or satisfy
the same. But this kind of response does bear a temporal relation to that to
which it is a response—it is temporally prior. What I cannot conceive of it as
a response which bears no temporal relation whatever to that wo which it was
response.
The assertion that God could be timelessly affected by
persons in the temporal world also seems odd. Considering how queer this would
be in the context of a timeless being’s being timelessly affected by the sin
and subsequent repentance of David. IF Yahweh is timeless, but compassionate,
it is not the case that Yahweh’s sorrow for David’s sin arises: 1) after David’s
sin; 2) before David’s sin; 3) at the time David sins. Similarly, Yahweh’s joy
for David’s repentance does not arise: 1) as David repents; 2) after David’s
repentance, nor 3) before David’s repentance. Not does God’s sorrow for David’s
sin precede his joy for David’s repentance. It is not correct to say that
Yahweh’s joy or sorrow arose at any time. At t1 (the first moment of
the world’s existence) it is correct to say: God is saddened by David’s sin and
is joyous about David’s repentance. At tn (The last moment of the
world’s existence) it is correct to say: God is saddened by David’s sin and is
joyous about David’s repentance: God is grieving because of David’s sin. And at
the time of David’s sin it would be correct to say: God is glad because of
David’s repentance.
God’s being timelessly affected in the way Mavrodes
suggests lacks the element of pathos. And I think this is so, even if, from the
standpoint of the believer, there were no phenomenological difference between God’s
being timelessly affected and God’s being temporally affected. God must share
my joys and sorrows at the time that I experience them or His sharing,
if sharing it be, loses much of its value. (David Lamont Paulsen, “Comparative
Coherency of Mormon (Finitistic) and Classical Theism” [PhD Thesis; The University
of Michigan, 1975], 209-12)
